Yes it's not good, Gale actually missed two further games later in the season so we actually won 4 from 14 when he was in the team, just thought I would mention that before I get accused of misleading stats by our resident pedant.

Out of interest last season we had the same win ratio without him as we did with him playing.

if he gets to play at 7 next year, and I cant see anyone who will stop him, I would like to see how he goes with a more dominant set of forwards with the signings of Carvell and Ferguson and partnering Gaskell.and putting Sammut in at hooker where he can probably play off the cuff a bit more zipping about out of dummy half.

Don't fib.

You can use statistics to try to make any point, but they never tell the full story. However I could hardly accuse you of "misleading", as you didn't actually say where you thought your stats were leading.

According to my figures, Gale only played 11 full games this season plus 2 off the bench, coming back from his main injury layoff. If you ignore his greatly disrupted season then you are simply being unfair. This is, btw, of course not to say he'd have been brilliant had he played the full season, we'll never know.

Gale's longest run without absence was 4 games in July-Aug. This ended up LWWL, the losses being the 20-26 at Wigan, where we had 8 men out, we played damn well and he did, but lost in the last second; and when we were, simply, robbed by a point after a spirited performance at home to Catalans.

As I mentioned a week or two back, of the 11 games he has played, Gale has been our MoM on 4 occasions which isn't too shabby and of course results are all-important but when you are trying to debate the perceived value/ability of a player then how he played personally is as germane as the result.

I notice Luke Gale was rated 2nd behind only Chase at halfback in the current issue of Rugby League World form guide...

The only other Bulls player in the ratings was Nick Scruton.

Are you sure you weren`t reading the Beano? What about Brough?

Just back from Hols and it sounded like I didn't miss much at the weekend.

On the issue about some players not being happy with FC I'm not really surprised. It's been a long tough season, we missed the top 8, there's been uncertainty over wages twice and that's not going to make for a team of happy and contented players. If it did I'd be amazed.

It was always going to be tough this season. I'm not sure many realised just how tough. With a rookie coach and a wafer thin squad and to be quite honest a bit of a circus running things off the field I'm surprised we haven't done worse.

I can't say that Cummins was the wrong choice as obviously I don't know the budget, who applied and obviously FC was recommended by MP.

However, I was disappointed at the time we couldn't get somebody more experienced to at least steady the ship for a couple of years. The last appointment of a rookie coach didn't go too well for us, and I really am praying that FC can show us why he is rated so highly next year.

Fingers crossed, looking forward to seeing Gaskell, I also like the idea of Sammut having a little more freedom to do what he does best.




The only way he should be 2nd from the top is if the form guide was upside down.

Brough... what about him? I thought we were discussing scrum halves? But since you mention him, he was the form stand off for the rounds in question.

I see Gale picked up the Bulls foundation player of the year just now too.

In your original post you stated Gale was second to Chase in Half backs. Talking of Scrum Halves its only my opinion but Gale is Behind Dobson, Smith, Soward even the young kid on loan at Saints from Warrington on present form. I thought when we signed him he was just what we needed but his form lately is on a par with Herbert.

I assumed it would be obvious that a form team would have both a 6 and a 7!

And you're entitled to your opinion but according to that magazine he was the 2nd best 7 in the league during the rounds covered. I'm prepared to cut him a little bit of slack for it not being a vintage year for him, perhaps he had other distractions.

There aren't a huge amount of quality 7's around and for a club in our position right now I don't think it's an immediate area of weakness.

Maybe the magazine reporters actually watch him play, and base their opinion on that.

[iRLW[/i uses Opta for it's Team of the Month ratings.

However, that particular team of the month may only cover the two SL rounds played in July, which in our case was Wigan away and Hull FC at home. It may include the two Challenge Cup rounds, however this is irrelevant as far as we're concerned.

... I won't even go into the confusing part that the current issue of [iRLW[/i is September which came out on the first Friday of August and covers things from July.